The Kaiju Preservation Society

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The Kaiju Preservation Society

By: John Scalzi

Narrated by: Wil Wheaton

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The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi's first stand-alone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times best-selling Interdependency trilogy.

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food-delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda, and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who's found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

John ScalziWil WheatonAudible Studios

Adventure

First Contact

Science Fiction

Feel-Good

Witty

Adventure First Contact Science Fiction Feel-Good Witty

Most relevant

First thing to say is that the “Author’s Note” does a LOT of heavy lifting for this book overall, describing the work as it does as a “pop song” and explaining the understandable circumstances which made the past couple of years less than conducive to writing a more brooding, complex novel.

And for sure, KPS is manifestly presented as a bit of fun. I don’t think I understood that at first, and for the initial chapters, I was enjoying and laughing along at the jocular dialogue and the quintessentially Gen Z language. At a point, I became disappointed that this tone actually persists throughout the entire novel and the rubber doesn’t really hits the road with a ‘serious’ story until quite late in the book. Even under threat of a messy demise, the characters still talk in that way young people tend to do when they’re TRYING to be funny, and which can be appreciated in well-targeted doses but became rather grating when it lasted for the entire novel...not to mention the fact that this was the voice of EVERY character, even the antagonist.

It’s possible I’m being a little unfair here, and that the last remark had more to do with Wil Wheaton’s narration, which was exhaustingly enthusiastic and read every slightly amusing aside as though it were a grand punchline. Sure, I can see how he was trying to strike the right tone for this playful novel, but the lack of variety in his performance made for a somewhat relentless experience, and not entirely in a good way. For the first time EVER, I actually considered switching from Audible to Kindle. And, while I’m on it, I can only assume Wil Wheaton does not bill himself as a voice actor, because despite Scalzi’s efforts to populate the novel with a diverse cast of character...EVERYONE sounds exactly the same. The only exception is the French Canadian helicopter pilot, whom Wheatons gives some kind of mild, weird Irish/Native American hybrid accent. (Unless that’s what French Canadian people sound like; I’ve not met enough to say.) Even the Irish character sounds American, and even when they finish their sentences with a very British “mate”.

So, that all sounds very critical. But in truth - and despite the book not quite turning out to be what I’d hoped it would - it does still exhibit Scalzi’s brilliantly creative imagination, his flair for storytelling and the humour (overdone as it is) does hit the spot. I laughed out loud many times. By the end, I understood that this was a “just for fun” book, and I can’t deny that I did indeed have fun.

I intend to read a lot more John Scalzi this year, though if any of his other audiobooks are narrated by Wil Wheaton, I think I’ll probably opt for the Kindle version instead.